Ben Cox's mental health struggle: "I ignored some signs that I was deteriorating"

There's a bit towards the end of Ben Stokes: Phoenix from the Ashes when its eponymous hero is reflecting on how it felt to watch back segments from the film shot during the worst of his mental health struggle. Moments where his face looked pallid, and not just because of the mood lighting.

Shortly before the closing credits, from a far healthier place, he can scarcely recognise that version of himself. "Every time Sam was asking me a question," he says, "I was like: 'I wonder what I said to this?' I've never seen myself like that before.'"

They might share a first name, but Ben Cox isn't Ben Stokes. He is a fellow professional cricketer, though, and in watching Stokes's film, the Worcestershire wicketkeeper discovered he shares plenty more in common with an athlete viewed as superhuman than he previously understood.

"The Stokes documentary is a brilliant visual of being someone who is mentally unwell," says Cox. "Watching that, you could instantly tell he was not well. He looked pale, like he had no energy about himself. His whole demeanour was not the one of the Ben Stokes that we all know.

"I could fully relate to everything he was saying – one hundred per cent. It was so powerful. You can just see visually the difference in Ben when he was good and when he was not so good. That is the visual of mental health that you don't see. But as snippets that are done over a long period of time, you can see it.

"And when someone like Stokes does it, who has so much more on his plate, it gives you some hope that other people will understand that you can take a break to put yourself first for a bit. You end up coming back better."

***

The documentary was released late in August, by which point Cox had just returned from his own break to deal with a mental health battle that dates back to March 2019, when "a bad life experience" caused a downward spiral: three years ago, it manifested itself in such a way that he starved himself for a fortnight, lost two stone and eventually moved back home with his parents "so they could help me get back to eating".

He realised then what he was up against and has been medicating in order to manage his situation ever since. Only, he veered away from that strategy last November – 12 months ago – and came off the medication. In his mind, the reasoning was sound: "It was almost like I wanted to park what had happened. I felt like I had moved on a long way from where I was."

The reality is that it isn't so simple, that you can't just pick when to overcome a mental illness, just as you couldn't rip the cast off a broken leg and line up for a marathon. Gradually, without the medication to manage the issues, he lost control – "I've also had some problems off the field this year in my personal life" – and the lava began once again to bubble away beneath the surface.

^{Ben Cox returned for the final weeks of the season after a two-month mental health break (Alex Pantling/Getty Images)}

Cox stepped away from cricket in mid-June, reappeared in earnest in August and is talking in October, a week after being awarded a testimonial by Worcestershire, a mark of 13 years' service. The upshot is a gratitude to Stokes for talking so openly – "I'm not embarrassed or ashamed to say it," he said in the film – about his continued use of medication. As Cox puts it: "It's nice to see someone be honest about it, because that's what I've been doing for three years." And after that experimental hiatus, he is proudly back on his medication programme.

"It's something that I now have accepted, that it's something to manage and not something to completely get rid of, unlike last November when I decided to get off the medication and was like: 'Well, that's the end of it now, I can draw a line in the sand and move forward' – this is actually a case of managing it, accepting it and living with it.

"I just had to make some tough decisions to get back to being myself and highlighting what was making me mentally ill. The hardest was to stop playing to get myself right."

Since the campaign finished, Cox has calculated the two halves of his season: pre-break and since. His statistics – averaging 23 across formats until June and 77 from August onwards – are the only time this conversation leans on the actual cricket itself, but they tell their own story and prove a point about the benefits of a well mind.

***

For the first three weeks from mid-June, he didn't leave home. Not only that, but he didn't want to. He was bedbound and sofabound, stowed away from public view. Only his family saw him, and mainly then to drop off food. "The burnout and exhaustion of putting on a brave face for months, it was just a cleansing period."

Cox, still only 30 despite 364 first-team appearances, has always been one of the fittest cricketers on the county circuit: he bases his training regime around the brutal reality of a day's wicketkeeping amounting to 96 overs' squatting – 576 individual squats if his bowlers can keep behind the front line – on top of however many balls he might practise for in a pre-morning warmup. That attitude has its roots in being fast-tracked as a kid: whisked out of school to make his professional debut as a 17-year-old in 2009, he took it upon himself to bulk up into a shape that could thrive in men's cricket and has retained that obsessive approach to his physique as a CrossFit enthusiast, which later developed into a successful side-hustle as the co-founder of an exercise-sock business.

Through the recluse phase, though, that thrust disappeared. "Unfortunately, with my mental health, I feel like I have no energy, no drive, no nothing."

But at the same time, he carried an initial embarrassment: "You've got severe guilt for not being at work and it's a really fine balance in terms of getting yourself out there. You don't want anyone thinking you're on a jolly, so I didn't want to go on holiday."

^{Ben Stokes returned to England action ahead of last winter's Ashes series after a mental heallth break (Chris Hyde/Getty Images)}

His teammates have known for a long time that he fought these troubles in the past, but no one knew – nor could have known – what was transpiring through the summer. "For me," he says, "that is the hardest part of mental health – having to go to work and put on a brave face every day.

"It's exhausting. It's a vicious cycle: you think you're doing the right thing by going to work, but you're actually making yourself worse by trying to put on a front to show that you're in a good place."

Worse still as a wicketkeeper: a professional fulcrum, a full-time cheerleader for his colleagues and the player most actively engaged with play, tasked with keeping everyone else going on all kinds of day, while fighting an internal fight.

But he was so convincing in his charade that when he approached Brett D'Oliveira, with whom he has played since turning out for Worcestershire's under-10 team together two decades ago, his friend first assumed he was carrying an injury. They were due to travel to Durham for a County Championship match, when Cox told him he thought he was "operating at 50 per cent capacity" and that "it wasn't fair on the team".

"He asked if I was injured, and I said: 'No, I'm just struggling, mate.' We chewed the fat a little bit and, credit to Brett, he made the decision there and then: 'You stay here and look after yourself.'"

***

Two months on from his return, 75 unread WhatsApp messages are waiting to be opened. Cox is keen to reply to each one to thank people for their concern once the sense of overwhelm has ceased.

Many of those well-wishes came from those who read about his mental health break in news stories and via a press release on the county's website. To live this most private of times still in the public eye remains an experience totally unimaginable for most of us, who don't need to put out a statement to inform strangers of the reasons for our silence.

That has meant, though, "a quite remarkable amount of support", extending well beyond those unread texts: Cox lives alone, but regular contact from family, friends and Steve Rhodes, his mentor and long-time former head coach, ensured that it didn't feel that way. Rhodes, who was in and out of the country during that period, still found the time to phone in and touch base over a coffee. "He was essentially the cricketing support that I needed – an outside perspective on how to get me better."

Cox knows, too, that he is fortunate as a cricketer: speaking like this, without fear or filter, is made easier by those who have come before him. It's not just Stokes, of course, but Marcus Trescothick, Michael Yardy, Jonathan Trott, Sarah Taylor and several others. There is a sense of relief in being able to say these things and not be blazing a trail.

^{Cox has long been considered one of the best wicketkeepers in the country (Alex Davidson/Getty Images)}

Instead, the Professional Cricketers' Association are fully prepped for episodes like this; there is an article on their website from two months ago, detailing the experiences of Anuj Dal, the Derbyshire allrounder, who praised the PCA for getting him through the 2021 season, when he had to overcome a fear of even getting out of bed and travelling to work.

Through the players' union, Cox was put in touch with a cognitive behavioural therapist for weekly meetings via Sporting Chance, the charity founded by Tony Adams in 2000; he is still in touch with his therapist, assigned to him based on her locality. "The PCA helped me three years ago to realise what I was dealing with," he adds, "and they put me in touch with a doctor. They did exactly the same this time around. They give you the direction to know that you're not on your own. They have experience, they know which path to put you down."

So, too, did his father. Cox went to him after a T20 Blast defeat by Derbyshire as a shoulder to cry on: "I got emotional to him and told him I couldn't do it anymore. He just said: 'What do you mean?' and feared the worst. I just said that I needed to stop. Because he'd seen me bad a few years ago, he just said: 'Make whatever decision that you need to make and we'll stand by you.'

"I never want to let my family down, mum and dad have done so much for me. I told him that I needed to stop. Because he accepted that, it was almost like he was granting it. I knew then that I could make the decision that I needed to make."

***

After three weeks confined to his own home, his first outing was to Wales for the birthday of his best friend and business partner.

It was his first taste of a social life since breaking down to D'Oliveira. "Weird," he calls it. "I didn't last very long." He drove down from Worcester and was back home the evening of the same day. "I wanted to pace myself getting back into it. It's like social anxiety – when you're so comfortable by yourself and you're trying to work things out, when you put yourself back in a social sphere, sometimes it can be overwhelming."

But he also talks about "the fork in the road" – a point at which he was faced with two options: "You can either carry on what you're doing or you take ownership and say: 'Right, we're going to get better and that will start today.'" For Cox, that meant forcing himself back to the gym. "It was a realisation," he explains. "Get some endorphins back in your brain, get some happiness back in your life.'"

Eventually, "happiness" would equate to beginning to feel ready for cricket again; getting back to that stage was always the goal, which is why retirement – escaping the game – was never on the table. Cox audibly jumps at the suggestion: "No, no. Not at all. I'm not ready to retire. I want to go for as long as I can. I'd like to go out on my own terms."

^{Cox, who has been awarded a testimonial year by Worcestershire, paid tribute to his family for helping him through the summer (Stu Forster/Getty Images)}

What keeps him going isn't necessarily dreams unfulfilled – he has long been considered the best gloveman on the circuit and now follows Jack Shantry, Daryl Mitchell and Matt Mason as recent recipients of a Worcestershire testimonial – but rather a professional competitiveness that has never left.

"I missed being around the guys," he says, "being in the dressing room. The little things really. We play sport so we love the moments of hitting runs or taking nice catches. I missed that, so that was a sign in itself that I was in a better place. Because I wanted to go back."

Logistically, Worcestershire worked it out for Cox to ease himself in through a second-team game against Somerset and then to return for the Royal London Cup, where he would hit three half centuries – two unbeaten – in six innings.

There is an enormous sense of pride in reaching that point, particularly after facing the first chunk alone at home, unrecognisable from the character he knows himself to be. "It's nice to know that even in my darkest times, I managed to get myself out of it.

"But I want to park the summer. I think I ignored some signs that I was deteriorating. If I had those moments again, I think I'd be like: 'Do you mind if I don't come into training today, I'm not feeling good.' It's just something I'll have to manage going forward."

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